3 Reasons Your Dogs Recall Is Flopping

Your doing all the training, your teaching your whippet that coming back pays off. You are using high value treats but still your dog is not coming back.

This can become very embarrassing and put you off even trying. I remember finding my young teen whippet Arthur being a real challenge, he was very much captivated by every sight, smell and imaginary thing! He was a cliche difficult to motivate young Whippet who wanted anything and everything else that wasn't available! often the issue is we just need to tweak things that may not be working out right.

There are often a few reasons your recall isn’t so much a rocket recall, but a rubbish recall.

1. You are not working on training generally

Very often when we have recall problems we fixate on them and work on those constantly, which can create frustration and damage the dog - owner relationship. It can seem a huge ask to get a dog who is not that motivated by recall to keep recalling, and fixating on that can make them see us as the fun police, constantly ready to interrupt them and call them away from the interests of life.

Instead be sure to train life skills and motivation games too. Work on fun exercises such as a hand touch, standing between your legs, tricks or attention games. Training without pressure can make a huge difference to our sensitive sighthounds and if they think we are having fun, they are alot more likely to be cooperative than "obedience drills" of recall back and forth from a stay position.

By creating a strong bond through training away from distractions will help your dog find you more valuable overall.

2. You are letting your dog fail regularly!

Many people will have a perfect recall when there is nothing around, but when distractions pop up the dog runs off! This can start to become a very big habit, where your dog knows they can just run off up to other people or dogs.

This often results in us either putting the lead back on around distractions, and just never teaching that recall'; creating a dog who gets better and faster than us at scanning for those exciting triggers. Or we simply end up accidentally having that experience of them running off and not returning- practice makes perfect essentially!

Everytime they run off successfully, whether to meet other dogs, chase squirrels or whatever it may be, they simply get better and better at it. This creates a stronger habit that is tricky to break.

Try using a 5-10m long line around distractions so your dog cannot fail. I love using tracking lines which are rubberized and I tie knots regularly throughout so that if they run fast, my hand hits a knot- not fly through metres of long line! By using a long line you can actively practice around distractions without your dog learning to run off, creating stronger new habits and not setting them up to fail.

3. You only recall when the walk is over

I have seen it many times. The dog is perfect throughout the walk, but once the owner loops back to the end of the walk, the dog knows "Fun time is over!" and thus starts the chase of their whippet running off, usually as the owner has that lead in hand and their body language changes.

Make sure you are practising recalling your dog and putting them on the lead throughout the walk. That way they know that the lead being on doesn’t mean the end of their walk. Call them to you, scatter some treats, pop them on the lead while they eat. Take a few steps away or walk onlead for a minute and then calmly let them offlead again and carry on your walk.

Try doing this several times a walk to help them understand that being on the lead doesn't mean the end of the walk.

Make sure your not just calling your dogs at the end of walks (or to only break up fun!), use a long line if your recall just isn’t there yet and have fun training your dog at other times.

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